John Schneider had seen enough by April 24. After backing Jeff Hoffman to open the 2026 season as the Toronto Blue Jays' closer, Schneider pulled him from the role and said the team would move to a closer by committee, a shift that changed the way Toronto has handled the back end of games ever since.
The move was on display Wednesday night, when the Blue Jays edged the Miami Marlins 2-1 in Toronto. Hoffman worked the sixth and seventh innings, Louis Varland handled the eighth and Tyler Rogers closed it out in the ninth, earning the 20th save of his career and giving Schneider a live example of the bullpen plan he chose after Hoffman lost the job.
Toronto had entered the season with Hoffman installed as the man for the ninth, and the team said before Opening Day it had never seriously chased another closer on the market or in a trade. Instead, it added Rogers to deepen the late innings, betting the group could cover high-leverage outs without having to commit to one arm. On paper, Hoffman still looked like a weapon: he struck out 24 batters over his first 12 games. The numbers underneath told a harsher story. He allowed 11 runs, nine earned, in 10.2 innings over that stretch, posted a 7.56 ERA and a 3.26 FIP, and carried a.609 BABIP that helped explain how hard contact and bad luck were piling up at the same time.
That is what made the April 24 decision so stark. Hoffman was not being removed because he lacked swing-and-miss stuff. He was being moved because the results had made the ninth inning too unstable to keep giving him alone. Schneider's answer was not to find a new fixed closer immediately, but to spread the work across multiple relievers and let matchups and availability dictate who got the biggest outs.
The Marlins game showed how that can work, and also why it is not a permanent answer unless one reliever clearly separates himself. Rogers, who had one save for the San Francisco Giants in 2024 and arrived with a track record that included a 9.4 bWAR, a 2.71 ERA and 402.1 innings pitched since 2021, got the final crack at the game and finished it. Hoffman was still used in leverage, but not in the role he was handed at the start of the year. If Schneider keeps the committee in place, Toronto's late innings will stay fluid; if he does not, the Blue Jays will eventually have to decide whether Rogers, Varland or someone else has earned the job Hoffman lost.
